


Blood, sweat and tears

by Noscere



Series: Cladograms and Phylogenies [4]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Blood, Character Study, Cutting, Gen, Hero Worship, Self-Worth Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 21:29:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6301090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noscere/pseuds/Noscere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jaune Arc is not a smart boy, nor is he particularly good at anything.</p><p>But he looks at his grandfather's sword, posed on the mantle, and dreams of being a hero.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood, sweat and tears

His mother was a surgeon: not a Huntress, but a human who had unlocked her soul’s power and wielded her semblance like her scalpel. It was never her choice. In her homeland of Mistral, she had been forced into the kingdom’s medical forces straight out of high school. The only choice she did have was when she had children: and for a woman tired of healing, the answer was, _as soon as possible._

“It’s in your blood,” she said, needle dancing in and out of the laceration lacing Jaune’s calf. “We are healers and keepers of order, Jaune, never warriors.”

“What about grandpa?” Jaune asked. He reached for the sword that had hung over the mantle until ten minutes ago. “He’s a war hero. What about great-great-grandma? She–”

His mother gently pushed the weapon away. It glinted in the light streaming through the Valean windows. Jaune scratched at the fluid-filled blisters on his fingers – his mother called it _eczema_ , but he knew it best as, _the reason why I can’t touch rubber duckies._

“Times have changed. Don’t look for war, my darling boy. There is only poverty and death in battle. Look at your grandpa – he returned from the war, and was never the same.” Jaune thought of the old man’s screaming fits in the middle of the night, and how you could never approach him from his blind side. “Learn to heal, and you will never want for anything.”

A few fat drops of blood trickled down his ankle. His mother tutted and tied off the string. She slid her gloved index finger down the cut. It glowed white, and then seamlessly sealed shut.

“Why do you have to sew first?” he asked, as she readied the scissors.

The metal slid in between string and freshly healed skin.

“It must heal properly,” she said, and even at six years old, he could hear the weight behind her words. “You can only begin to heal once everything is perfectly in place.”

 

His father was a lawyer: a public defender, working a dead-end job in a cockroach infested office in the slums of Eastern Vale. He had graduated the top of his class in law school. But instead of signing on with the Schnees or the Lavender Broadcasting Corporation, the elder Arc went into public defense. His father supported a family of twelve – eight children, a wife, two in-laws (and one who wasn’t quite all there) – on a paycheck meant for a bachelor. It was only his wife’s massive paycheck that covered their bills, and the disparity still rankled in his father’s blood. Jaune could hear it from the hissed arguments his parents would have when they thought their children were asleep.

“ _I can’t make you take this burden,”_ his father would say.

“ _I chose this of my own free will_.” His mother would sigh. “ _It’s in your blood, Justin. Do what makes you happy._ ”

“ _I can’t, if it makes you suffer! Don’t you doctors have a saying? ‘Do no harm?’_ ”

“ _What kind of example does that set for Jaune?”_

_“Pana, for God’s sake, he’s eight! He’s got plenty of time to choose a career!”_

_“Do you see the way he looks at that sword? He’s getting ideas! That boy can hardly chop carrots without cutting off his fingers!”_

They would fall into their old argument: was it better to live free of harm and monetary woes but sacrifice your happiness, or to serve man and live poor in money and health but rich in love?

 

After a while, Jaune stopped listening to those arguments. His parents wanted him to be a doctor, like his mother and his sisters Apricot and Citrine, or a lawyer, like his father and Daffodil. Ecru was doing internships at the Schnee communications department and Jasmine was researching cures for cancer. His other sisters had netted their own glory, even though they were still in middle school: Ochre was the musical genius who had auditioned for second violinist in the Valean Symphonic Orchestra. Saffron had a full-ride scholarship to play tennis at Vale’s most prestigious school. His sisters had already blazed their own paths. To follow them would be to waste away in their shadow.

There was no glory in his parents’ work, no awards for stitching lungs inside patients or getting another Faunus acquitted for a crime she did not commit. Nobody looked up to Justin Arc or Panacea Arc, not even their own children.

Jaune looked to the sword that hung on the mantle, and dreamed big.

 

Jaune was ten, at the gangly age where children wanted to be adults but looked nothing like the part. They were walking down the main street of the Faunus district in Vale. Jaune had an ice cream cone in his right hand, liquid chocolate dripping down his fingers. The coolness helped soothe the itchiness, but only just. The eczema had spread up his arms as he aged, turning his elbows into rough deserts of cracked and scaly red skin.

Screaming broke out across the street. Glass shattered, as a storefront burst into flame. His father instinctively pulled him to the shelter of a nearby café as a gold-caped Huntsman’s motorbike drew up outside of the building.

“Hands up! Don’t move, you’re under arrest!” he proclaimed to the group scattering across the street. “I said don’t move!”

They didn’t listen.

Light burst from the man’s broad body, swirling towards the fleeing forms. It hit them dead on, fracturing into tiny spindles that immediately immobilized them. The Huntsman gave the webbed men and women one look, then raced towards the bloodied people stumbling out of the street.

“Dad? What’s going on?” Jaune asked, huddling behind the solid wall of his father’s legs.

“Anti-Faunus protestors,” his father replied, distaste dripping off his every word. “My father-in-law fought a war for them, and yet this is how they repay us.”

“Dad?”

His father pointed at the flames shooting from the gap-toothed maw of the broken storefront. “Anti-Faunus protestor work.” Fire rollicked off his tongue. “They go around, looking for Faunus establishments, and then throw fire bombs into the place. They waste their lives, my son.”

“But why? Why would they want to hurt Faunus? Aren’t they just like us?”

“Some people don’t see the world like we do, Jaune.” His father’s shoulders were hard-set as the sirens of fire trucks keened above the crackle of popping glass and the screams of the injured. “But we’ll find them, and we’ll bring them to justice. It’s in our blood. Your grandpa fought to keep the Faunus free. We Arcs may not wield the sword like Huntsmen anymore, but we will see justice done.”

 

Jaune thought of the glossy spreads of Huntsmen in magazines, or the weapons lining the attic back at the Arc ancestral home. He thought of the museum exhibits dedicated to his grandfather’s comrades, and their exploits. He thought of the way his friends spoke of their grandparents in awed tones, as if they were gods in living flesh instead of men and women who still twitched with battle fever in their nightmares. He looked at the Huntsman, whose cloak still shone in the clogging smoke like a beacon, carrying an injured man who was bleeding from the head out of the store.

“But nobody talks about you…”

The roar of another motorbike came down the street.

His father shrugged. “You do it for the job, Jaune, not for the glory. Life is sacrifice. But if you make the sacrifice for the things you love… well, it’s worth it.”

Jaune stared as the Huntsman – his golden cloak whirling about his form – drew two thin crystals of Dust and hurled them at the burning storefront.

“There’s still a child in there!" The Huntsman threw more crystals of Dust, but the firestorm refused to abate. "Sapphira, I’m going in!”

“Idiot! You’ll burn!” his partner called, her motorbike tires shrieking to a stop on the pavement. Her black hair glistened over her shoulders like a wet shroud. “Kostya! You’re not fireproof! Come back!”

His father’s cellphone rang, and Justin Arc turned away from the burning storefront to answer. Over the burble of a conversation Jaune barely heard, Jaune watched the man’s cloak disappear into the smoke. His partner flitted between the survivors, blue electricity swirling down her forearms to heal the injured, black hair rippling as she lifted her head to watch the burning entrance.

It seemed to take an eternity, but the Huntsman eventually staggered out, blood-drenched gold cloak protectively wrapped around the dove Faunus boy in his arms. He handed the child to a waiting paramedic, and collapsed on the pavement.

His partner dropped to her knees and began running her hands along his face, blue electricity sinking into the singed and bloodied skin. Jaune had the sinking feeling it would not be enough.

Jaune’s father turned around. His face tightened, and he took Jaune by the hand.

“We should help,” Jaune said, digging in his heels.

“This isn’t our place.” His father’s grip was tight on Jaune’s wrist. “We can’t heal those wounds. Let’s go, Jaune.”

 

Jaune snuck a look at his father’s newspaper at the breakfast table the next morning. The Huntsman from yesterday was plastered over the front: he was smiling, broad shoulders drenched in printed sunlight, cape fluttering in a frozen breeze. The woman beside him was leaning against a sniper rifle, one arm slung around her partner’s waist.

Saffron jostled him. “Move it, kid, and pass the maple syrup.”

Jaune only had enough time to read the headlines.

HUNTSMAN HAILED AS HERO FOR DEFENDING FAUNUS IN ANTI-FAUNUS ATTACK

(Had he read on further, he would have learned that Konstantin Okeanovich, partner to Sapphira Shui-Tu, died in the hospital.)

 

* * *

 

 

Perhaps it is the strain that comes from being the son of a war hero who is nothing like his father; perhaps it is the strain that grows from a history of poverty that is still etched into her skin. Jaune’s parents never stop quizzing him once he is old enough to do his sums and read.

“There’s no life if you’re poor,” his father said, finger trailing over the textbook. Jaune sounded out the word: _eh-man-cip-ate-ion_. “Emancipation, not _ate-ion._ You don’t need to be famous. But if you don’t have the money to back it up, nobody will listen to you.”

“There’s no life if you’re crippled,” his mother said, fingers dancing over the fluid-filled bubbles on Jaune’s palms. Her Aura washed over his skin, banishing the itchy rashes. “You don’t need to be famous. But if you don’t have the body, nobody will listen to you.”

 

Jaune, to his parents’ ever-constant despair, is not good at healing, or reading and writing.

“It’s so simple! You’re an Arc! How can you not do this?” his father demanded, stabbing the textbook with an index finger. “I’ve shown you a thousand times!”

Jaune twisted his fingers over and over again. The fluid-filled bubbles beneath his skin melded into one giant conglomerate laced with scarlet blood. “Dad, I just don’t get–“

“Stop that!” His father slapped the table. “You know it makes your hands worse!”

“I know!” Jaune clenched his hands. “But you’re not making it any easier!”

 

It’s the arts that draw his attention: charcoal in broad strokes, bringing softness to rough butcher paper, or brilliant oils on dull canvas. He’s not a sports boy, or a genius, but he coaxes breathing shapes from paper and canvas like he’s giving them blood and flesh.\

But it’s not what he wants. There is no life for an artist, his parents say, none but poverty and neglect and the powerlessness of someone who screams into the void and remains unheard.

His art supplies bring bubbles of fluid and rashes to his skin, ugly sores that he can only hide behind dark full-length hoodies and fingerless gloves. Although he is too old for superhero toys, he pretends that his gloves are armor and his hoodie a cape fluttering in his wake. His parents pass it off as a phase.

Jaune Arc looks to the mantle, and dreams of gold-caped heroes who wield blue-hilted swords.

 

 

“It’s as simple as breathing,” his mother said through gritted teeth. “Now try again! Search within, and will your body to heal.”

He looked at his reddened fingers, and the ever-constant blisters that refused to heal.

“I can’t,” he said, on the verge of tears.

“You have to! Nobody wants a doctor with hands like these!”

“Mom, I don’t want to become a doctor…”

“Do you want to live like I did?” He heard the self-loathing dripping off her every word. “Do you want to sleep with pigs, and eat caterpillars with your potatoes because there is no meat?”

“No, but mom, those days–“

“You have to learn!” she shouted, as he picked at the scabs. Bloodied liquid seeped from his itchy hands, and oh, doesn’t it feel nice to see his body turn inside out. “You have to learn, or you’re going to go hungry and live on the streets! And don’t do that!” She slaps his hand, power jumping from her hand to his, and the scabs reform. “Oh, Jaune, what are we going to do with you? You’re not like your sisters… how are you going to make it in this world?”

He looked to the sword on the mantle.

 

* * *

 

Jaune is fifteen now, driftless in school, bottom of the class.

He’s the loser, the one bullies push into lockers, the one who sits alone at lunch.

He reads in his spare time, of battles long since past, and imagines he is riding at the forefront, the Arc sword born high in his hand. Jaune sees mines filled with mistreated Faunus, liberated by his hands. He can almost feel the flutter of a thick cloak on his back.

When bullies scribble over his hands, he imagines enemy metal slicing through his hands, unleashing tight pain and hot blood, and he imagines drawing Crocea Mors back and disarming the offender.

But he drives the thoughts back – the Arcs are a family of healers and keepers of order, not lawless men who would harm the questionably innocent.

So he chokes back the blood dribbling down his tongue, keeps his head high, and glares back at the bullies.

It doesn't take long for them to break his spirit.

 

One day, while his mother is screaming, Jaune takes out his scissors from his pencil bag and slashes his hand.

It hurts – a quick zip of pain that’s gone as soon as it arrives. He can see the underlayer of skin – dermis, his mother calls it – lying underneath the neat cliffs of his epidermis.

His mother doesn’t notice the thin trail of blood when she finally calms down.

 

It becomes a cheap thrill: blood begets blood, after all. He draws the scissors along his forearms, cutting neat lines into skin, just deep enough for blood to well up and pain to flash along his skin.

But it’s not enough. It sets his heart pumping, once or twice, and then the thrill dies away. The scissors aren’t sharp enough to penetrate beyond a few layers of skin.

“I’m a coward,” he whispers as he considers the sword. He longs to take it into his hands, thinks about the way it would burn as he laid it across his arms, thinks about the way red would paint his skin and swirl along the curls of his hair. But he thinks of the sting and the gold-caped Huntsman drenched in his own blood, and suddenly, the sword is not so attractive.

He draws in red these days, and imagines the sword on the mantle is dripping with the blood of the guilty. He thinks of justice delivered in flesh and pain and blood, and wishes he was man enough to give it.

 

One day, the scissors aren’t enough.

Nobody is at home. There are benefits to being the youngest of a family of seven with two constantly working parents.

Jaune takes the sword from the mantle and heads to the attic. There’s a training dummy stuffed with straw, back from his great-grandpa’s school days. His father used to beat it after a hard day at work.

He takes a stance, as he has seen in the movies, and draws Crocea Mors from its sheath.

The blade nicks his forearm, and hot blood spills from the cut. He drops the weapon, but the pain beckons him back.

“I see,” he says more to himself. “I need to respect you, before I can master you.”

 

He abandons his art and buries in himself in training manuals and diagrams. Jaune runs through thousands of exercises designed to strengthen muscles and reinforce his soul – sometimes, with Crocea Mors in hand; sometimes, it’s just him and the training dummy.

Crocea Mors is unpredictable. Occasionally, it will slip from Jaune’s sweaty hands and draw a bloody line down his calf. Other times, it’s an extension of his arm, and he whales on the training dummy like it’s the source of all evil in the world.

 

* * *

 

 

“You have to stop!” His father holds up Jaune’s scarred forearm. “Can’t you see what you’re doing to your mother?”

“Well, if you’d give me a teacher, I would know how to use the sword!”

“You’re a healer!” she says, clutching her arms. “It's in your blood! You don’t need to fight!”

“This is what I want to do.” Jaune runs a careful finger along the flat of his blade. He has learned the metal doles out as much respect as it is given. “Mom, Dad, nothing you have said or done has stopped me. You’ve said it yourself. I’m not smart enough to be a doctor or lawyer–“

“There are other ways,” his father says, eyes frantic like a trapped dove, “this isn’t a sacrifice you should make–“

“I want to help people. I want to help them this way.”

“It’ll cost you in blood!”

“I want this, mom! It’s what I’ve always wanted to do!"

"You'll die!"

"Dad, for the first time in my life everything is perfectly in place! I know I can do this!"

Jaune, his mother and father argue long into the night.

 

 

The next morning falls on the weekend. After breakfast, Jaune heads to the attic. He takes up the sword, arms wreathed in a black sweatshirt that covers his scars. He fumbles for the mechanism on Crocea Mors’s sheath.

The shield with the Arc family crest pops into existence. He straps it around his arm and picks up his grandfather’s sword.

He stares down the dummy, and unleashes his war cry.

It’s small, but it’s triumphant, and it screams his desire to protect the innocent.

After all, it’s in his blood.


End file.
